


The Air You Breathe

by Dracoduceus



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Mer!Baptiste, Mer!Lúcio, MerMay, Other, Set during Storm Rising event, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 14:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19021855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: To avoid a cluster of Enforcers, Genji dodges...and falls off a cliff into the water.Though worried, his team cannot linger and must continue onward to the Sea Fort without him. Little did they know that he was pretty well taken care of.Two creatures had found him as he sank beneath the waves and breathed air into his lungs.





	The Air You Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'm always going to go to [Hero](https://twitter.com/ichigowhiskey) for all of my titles from now on. 
> 
> Written while binge-playing Storm Rising for the Anniversary event. Most of this was written while waiting for matches.

The water felt hard as stone when Genji hit and his breath, or as much as his synthetic body had, was forced out. For a moment he was stunned, staring up at the silvery surface as he sank and sank. 

Then he tried to scream, to claw at the water around him to get out but it was too much too fast, his armor too heavy. 

“Oh look,” he heard a voice say. 

Another voice joined in. “It is an air-breather,” it said and another set of hands caught him around the waist. With an undulating motion, the owners of the hands stopped him from sinking. “A  _ dense _ air-breather.”

The first voice giggled. “I don’t think it’s an air-breather,” he said. Genji struggled, reaching upward, tried to gesture up. “But it needs the surface.”

“It needs air,” the second voice corrected.

“I can give it air,” the first voice said and Genji could feel hands on his faceplate. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, he realized, and opened them.

The world around him was blue, cut with golden streams of light from the surface and pale blue from the pounding surf. His own running lights cut shafts of light into the darkness and highlighted the metallic sheen in the scales of the creature in front of him.

“It doesn’t have a mouth,” the creature said. “I think it will drown, Baptiste!”

“It’s heavy,” the second creature, apparently called Baptiste, said. “I don’t think it can swim on its own.”

_ Not with all of my armor! _ Genji wanted to protest. He brought a hand to his face and pulled away his mask. A few stubborn pockets of air, caught in the upper corners of his mask, escaped with the motion, racing gleefully to the surface high above.

He stared, mouth agape, at the creature in front of him. His upper body was human-shaped, looking like a young man with a goatee and dark hair—the light was too unreliable to more readily identify the color of his hair or eyes but the scales along its arms and scattered over its chest shone green and gold in the lights of Genji’s running lights.

The lower half of the man…well below the navel of a human would be, he transferred into a long fish tail with gauzy green and gold fins. Genji stared in awe.

“Ah,” the creature in front of him said, revealing sharp teeth. “There!”

Then he swooped in and pressed cold lips to Genji’s mouth. He gasped in surprised and received a lungful of air—and of water.

“You never do it right,” Baptiste chided but he sounded amused. “Here, help me hold him.” Genji was spun around as he struggled not to cough and lose the precious oxygen that the first creature had given him.

Again, it was difficult to tell more about him but Genji got the impression of dark skin on his human-shaped torso—darker than the first creature’s—and dark blue scales that shaded to bronze at the tip of its fins.

Then it, too, was kissing Genji, offering him a lungful of oxygen. Genji turned away and coughed to get rid of the remains of the seawater in his lungs.

“Can you hear us, air-breather?” Baptiste wondered. “Can you understand us?”

Genji nodded, feeling the powerful undulations of the creatures churning the water around him.

“Does that mean yes?” the green-and-gold creature wondered. “Air-breathers are so strange.”

Baptiste laughed and Genji couldn’t help but relax. He looked powerful, in control, and completely at ease. Genji was safe…for now.

“He  _ is _ heavy,” the other creature said.

“We should return him to the air,” Baptiste said. “A shame.” The two creatures moved Genji around and he let them, unsure how to help. The green-and-gold hooked Genji’s right arm around his shoulders and Baptiste did the same with his left. Together they pumped their tails and Genji began to rise.

“To the boat launch,” the green-and-gold suggested. “The waves might be too powerful for him.”

They moved quickly through the water, pausing once for both the green-and-gold and Baptiste to fill his lungs with oxygen. The green-and-gold added tongue to the kiss, drawing Genji close as if it were a proper kiss while Baptiste laughed.

“Watch out, air-breather,” he teased. “You are making Lúcio hungry.”

The green-and-gold, apparently called Lúcio, laughed and said, “As if you aren’t as hungry as I am.”

Fuck, if this is what it meant to be devoured, then Genji would take it. Lúcio’s mouth was soft, his kisses greedy; Baptiste’s mouth was demanding, full of confidence in his ownership of the kiss. Between them, Genji was weak.

They towed him along the water beneath the swirling waves, where the sun turned the world pale green and blue. Now Genji could hear the roaring of the waves, could more easily see streaks of seafoam as they pulled away from the rocks. Here Genji could get a better look at his saviors.

Baptiste was indeed darker, the blue and bronze scales along his upper torso nearly invisible. His hair was short and his eyes dark but his mouth was quick to smirk rather than smile. He was larger than Lúcio, broad in the shoulders and in his tail, which was less flashy, reminding Genji of a whale or dolphin rather than the brilliant frills of Lúcio.

In comparison Lúcio was flashy, the metallic hues in his scales catching the light and making him sparkle—a colorful reef fish next to the deep-sea fish that Baptiste resembled. Against his dark skin, his scales seemed even brighter and his hair flowed behind him in gold-tipped ropes braided with colorful shells and bits of coral.

They were  _ beautiful _ and if Genji wasn’t concentrating on holding his breath beneath the water, he would have sighed and drown long ago. He had never saw any enjoyment in sitting and watching the  _ koi _ in the pond at Shimada Castle, as his brother did, but if the  _ koi  _ looked like Lúcio and Baptiste? Then perhaps nothing would have happened. He would have wasted away there, watching the light play over their scales and watching the muscles of their body move beneath their skin.

His trance was broken when something fell into the water nearby. It was a black-clad body wearing a red helmet.

It seemed to sink in slow motion and Lúcio and Baptiste paused to watch it. The body didn’t move. Then another fell, and a few rocks. Genji craned his head up but couldn’t see much beneath the foaming waves and the vague shapes of the cliffs as they were wreathed in grey fog.

At last, Baptiste said, “That’s been happening a while. Do you know what that’s about, air-breather?”

“The storm is coming,” Lúcio observed and they rocked in the waves.

Genji stared after the body and nodded. He was dragged up to the surface and held there, Baptiste and Lúcio emerging seconds later.

It was raining and he nearly drowned again as he gasped for air. They were battered by the waves but Baptiste and Lúcio seemed to find no issue holding him above the water. Here Genji could see the dark slashes of their gills, flaring along their neck and collarbones.

“Talon,” he gasped and coughed, slapped in the mouth by a wave. Lúcio laughed but above the water his voice was more guttural, would be terrifying.

_ Should _ be terrifying.

“They’re from a group called Talon,” Genji blurted. “My team and I were chasing them.”

Baptiste grunted, his dark eyes suspicious. “Why?”

Genji hesitated. How to explain the world’s issues in the space of a handful of breaths? “Maximilien, the accountant for their group, is making his escape,” he said. “We’re tracking him. They’re a terrorist organization.”

Perhaps it was unfair to expect them to care. They were made for the world beneath the waves, after all—why should they care of issues above the waves?

But Lúcio frowned. “I’ve heard of Talon. They have ties with Vishkar.”

Baptiste stared unblinkingly at Genji, then turned to Lúcio. “Is that so?”

The storm howled but, in the distance, Genji could hear gunfire and the crackle of electricity; cries of pain and the distinct sounds of a chronal accelerator.

He could also hear the sound of engines.

“Over there,” Lúcio said, lifting a hand out of the water to point. “Turn off your lights, air-breather.”

“My name is Genji.”

Baptiste snorted. “Turn off your lights, then, Genji, or you will be seen.” Genji obeyed quickly and watched as black zodiacs skimmed the tops of the waves, heading toward the cliffs.

“There is a boat launch there,” Lúcio observed.

“I need to stop them,” Genji told them urgently. “My team…”

To his surprise, Lúcio nodded immediately and looked at Baptiste. It was Baptiste that answered. “Yes,” he said grimly. “Of course. Hold your breath, Genji.”

Genji took a deep breath and they sank beneath the waves again. This time when they swam, they  _ moved _ , darting along the cliffs, dodging waves and currents with an ease that was alien to Genji.

“Hold him,” Baptiste said and Lúcio took all of Genji’s weight, their speed immediately dropping. Now the water was dark as ink, the only indication of the surface being the pale slashes of seafoam and the slightly lighter hue of the sky than the darkness of the ocean depths. Baptiste’s dark coloring blended in and he disappeared quickly.

“Don’t struggle,” Lúcio grunted. “We’re almost to the pier.”

The sound of the zodiacs was louder, even muffled by the spray of the water. Genji thought he could see the white lines cut by their rotors—

—and then he couldn’t.

Lúcio shoved him above the water and Genji slammed into the wooden pole of a dock. “Hurry,” he laughed. “Wait!” Turning, Genji found himself being kissed again.

“I don’t need air,” Genji gasped and Lúcio flashed a sharp smile.

“I know,” Lúcio said with a wink, beginning to undulate his body and swim backwards into the choppy waves. “I just wanted to do that. Find us sometime, air-breather. We like a fun toy to play with.”

Then he twisted and dove beneath the waves. In the distance, Genji could see three more zodiacs on their way and he drew his  _ wakizashi _ to deflect bullets that didn’t come. A moment later he realized that they were all aiming their guns at the water.

Then the water exploded and a zodiac—and Baptiste, who had thrown himself at the boat from beneath—went flying.

Praying that his mechanisms weren’t completely ruined, Genji reloaded his  _ shuriken _ and threw them at the remaining boats, sending their inhabitants into the water.

“Oi!” Lena cried from behind him. “Genji! You’re alive! I thought you were a goner for sure!”

With a last look at the choppy waves and seeing no sign of the creatures that had saved him, Genji turned. “You’re not rid of me that easy.”

That night, after capturing Maximilien and ensuring their meeting, Genji dreamed of the sea and two scaled creatures that kissed him as often as they gave him air beneath the waves.

He dreamed of the sea often after that, and of Lúcio and Baptiste and their saltwater kisses until he didn’t. 

Until he returned to the newly recalled Overwatch and found two familiar faces. They grinned hungrily when they saw him and pressed him between their two bodies. 

“Air-breather,” Lúcio teased. “You found us.” 

“I don’t think he needs  _ air _ now,” Baptiste murmured. “Although...we are willing to check. Just in case.” 

Genji yanked off his mask and then dragged them closer. “Just in case,” he echoed and felt their laughter. 

**Author's Note:**

> Love it? Hate it? Have questions? Feel free to come and yell at me on twitter at [Dracoduceus](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus). If that's not your thing, I can also be found on tumblr at [ClassyWastelandBread](https://classywastelandbread.tumblr.com/) but I am almost never there so expect a delay. 
> 
> I love hearing from you!
> 
> ~DC


End file.
